他无她爱掖B8 LeeReurEvol
丙申酉壬午愚,德尽人间乐。
关注数: 43 粉丝数: 166 发帖数: 11,727 关注贴吧数: 12
Why California's Prop 8 Against Gay Marriage Was Struck Down( There is no such thing as gay marriage, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, Aug. 4, in a remarkable and unprecedented opinion that immediately reshaped the debate over homosexuality in America. The decision all but guaranteed a showdown over the rights of gays to marry before the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead of "gay marriage," said U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in a 138-page ruling, there is simply marriage — and everybody is entitled to it, no matter their gender or their would-be spouse's. Vaughn's meticulously detailed and sometime plodding ruling struck down California's 2008 ballot initiative, known as Prop 8, and restored the Golden State to the ranks of five other states where same-sex couples may wed. How soon those weddings can resume will depend on how Vaughn responds to a motion by Prop 8 proponents on the eve of his ruling asking him to stay the order until the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals hears the case. "The parties do not dispute that the right to marry is fundamental," Vaughn wrote, declaring that the gay-marriage ban violates the Due Process clause of the U.S. Constitution. "The question presented here is whether plaintiffs seek to exercise the fundamental right to marry; or, because they are couples of the same sex, whether they seek recognition of a new right." (See the arguments in the Prop 8 case.) He ruled that gay couples who want to marry are not asking for a new right but rather simply want the same right to marry that courts have so strongly defended for straight couples. Allowing gays to marry, he reasoned, doesn't change marriage; it simply reflects a better understanding of gender and gender roles in society. "The evidence shows that the movement of marriage away from a gendered institution and toward an institution free from state-mandated gender roles reflects an evolution in the understanding of gender rather than a change in marriage. The exclusion [of gays from marriage] exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed." (See a visual history of the gay-rights movement, from Stonewall to the overturning of Prop 8.) The ruling also said any ban on gay marriage offends the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause, primarily because, Walker wrote, there is no legitimate state interest in restricting marriage to heterosexuals. That thrilled gay-rights supporters, even the many legal experts who have loudly rebuked attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies for bringing the case when its reception by the current — and very conservative — Supreme Court is questionable at best. (Olson and Boies are odd bedfellows: they famously contested Bush v. Gore in the wake of the 2000 presidential election before the Supreme Court.) (See other gay-marriage cases headed toward the Supreme Court.) "The opinion is strong, first because it is carefully grounded in the factual record made by the parties," constitutional scholar Samuel Marcosson of the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law tells TIME. "Judge Walker used the combination of fundamental rights and equal-protection analysis. I don't think there is a better federal constitutional argument to be made. The question is whether we currently have a Supreme Court truly prepared to rule in favor of these arguments."
首页 1 2 下一页